We are used to hearing the stories about the shortage of blue crabs in the bay and what is being done to help, including the most recent regarding the DNR' s plan to buy-back over 3500 commercial limited crab catchers licenses. The problem we are seeing now however was widely reported this past spring, relating the lack of the seasonal migration of labor to the crab picking houses on our Eastern Shore. A change in immigration law resulting in a cap on allowable workers appears to have driven off the foreign crab pickers, with no local workers willing to work for those wages - not even inmates? which was also discussed earlier this year. Everyone seems to have been aware that a problem was brewing, but no one seems to have found a solution.As a result, we may be serving North Carolina crab meat this week, because there is just no Maryland meat available. We hear that the bushels of crabs being hauled from the bay are going primarily to the crab houses, where the customers are happy to pick their own.
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